A Dress That Moves — With a Life of Its Own

For the designer Hussein Chalayan, technology is an essential part of designing a collection. It’s evident in the way he carefully describes his ideas for his performative runway shows — but also in the way he explains his process.”For me, it always starts with the idea and the piece I’m making. The way it’s presented comes after,” he says. (Today, Chalayan showed his fall/winter 2016 collection in Paris, which was full of dresses and blouses printed with technical drawings.)

In the more than 20 years that he’s been working in fashion, Chalayan’s runway offerings have felt more like conceptual performances than fashion shows. In spring/summer 2007, he showed garments that were wired to transform from short to long; for his fall/winter 2000 collection, a coffee table transformed into a skirt as a model attached it to her belt loops; and last season, paper dresses literally dissolved on the runway under shower heads.

This week, some of Chalayan’s most technologically advanced work will go on view at Boston’s Museum of Fine Art in its “#techstyle” exhibition — alongside pieces by Iris Van Herpen, Alexander McQueen, Viktor & Rolf and Mary Katrantzou. As Pam Parmal, the chairwoman of the museum, was preparing for the show last spring, she commissioned Chalayan to make a mechanical dress — dubbed “The Possessed Dress” — for the exhibition. The result was surprisingly accurate: a garment that reacts to movement and changes shape as it’s worn, in turn impacting the wearer’s movement. The dress will debut when the show opens this weekend, though it was worn by a dancer earlier this fall in a performance called “Gravity Fatigue” at Sadler’s Well in London. (That performance was captured in a video that debuts exclusively here.) According to Chalayan, the dress reminds him of the fashion risks he took in the ’90s. “It could have broken during the performance,” he says. “There’s always a risk element in all of my work.”

But when it comes to actually wearing his pieces, Chalayan is adamant that he is primarily a designer for consumers. There are the pieces he creates for art — and then there are things he designs to be worn. “To be honest with you,” he says, “the pieces we do that involve technology are only prototypes. Ninety-nine percent of my collections are wearable.”

“#techstyle” is on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, March 6-July 10, 465 Huntington Avenue, Boston. mfa.org.